


in between being bright and young

by guycecil



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Character Study, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-09 00:06:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3228662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guycecil/pseuds/guycecil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only way up is up, the only way over is forward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in between being bright and young

**Author's Note:**

> I've only seen the first season of the anime, so I apologize for any errors in continuity, etc. Ships are mostly implied, but I headcanon Kida as polyamorous so. You know.
> 
> This was done for a prompt challenge over [here](http://100-prompts.livejournal.com/692.html) (Table B). I might do more in the future if the feeling strikes me! Title from "Fourth of July" by Fall Out Boy.

_1\. Lively_

Kida likes to talk – it makes him feel bigger, like a superhero on top of a building staring down at the villain, and everyone listens when he talks – at least until they realize he doesn’t actually have much to say. It takes the Yellow Scarves – and Mikado, he supposes – a long time to figure that out, though.

_2\. Remorseful_

The thing is that if the Yellow Scarves didn’t exist, none of this would be a problem. He can’t pin it on anyone else, because these are the facts: one, take any of the other elements out of the equation and it still comes down to the Yellow Scarves; two, regardless of the situation now, people have gotten hurt in the past; and three, he’s the reason they exist.

_3\. Dismiss_

He still sees them around, sometimes – people from back then. Not just Kadota and his gang, but people from the Yellow Scarves, people he knew, people he saw get hurt, people he screwed over and betrayed and a hundred other things. The space between junior high and high school is hard. Mikado makes it easier.

_4\. Heavy_

Mikado’s hands have always been dry and soft, and Kida used to hold them all the time in elementary school, usually dragging Mikado along behind him against his will, the other boy whining the whole way. Anri’s hands are rougher, tougher – not stronger, he thinks, but different. He wishes he could hold them both at the same time, but Anri’s hand sits like a 50 kilo weight the one time he does hold it, and he’s not sure he can do that again.

_5\. Forward_

One day he wakes up in a hospital bed and decides he can’t keep standing still, so he takes Saki’s hand in his and decides to start walking. He thinks he’s made this decision before, but it’s hard to tell anymore – easier to head on and let it worry him later.

_6\. Prowl_

It used to make him feel powerful, walking down the streets with his hands in his pockets and a bandana around his neck. He had people at his back and the weight was lifted of his shoulders and he felt like he could do anything. The streets were his home and the world was his prey. He never wants to feel like that again.

_7\. Cut_

He didn’t see Saki when they brought her in back then. He saw her after – a long time after, when they’d covered up all the real injuries behind bandages and blankets. Anri is different, because her wounds aren’t deep enough for bandages, so they’re all out in the open, and he’s not sure whether he hates that or the bandages more.

_8\. Compromise_

Sometimes you just can’t make it work, Kida learns. You can try to mesh one life with another and pray that it works out but sometimes it just fucking doesn’t and it hurts. Sometimes you’re a gang leader and a high schooler and you end up bleeding out on the floor of a creepy warehouse in your best friend’s arms. Sometimes you try to bring together a girl who doesn’t understand love and a boy who loves everyone and a boy who doesn’t know what he feels and you end up running from everything, and in the end, sometimes you just have to deal with it.

_9\. Impulse_

Real life is easier, because he doesn’t have to plan. He doesn’t have to guess and second guess when he’s with Mikado and Anri – he just has to be Masaomi, and that’s a hell of a lot easier – here, he can drag them off on some adventure, and the most dangerous consequence is that he’ll get home too late to work on homework, or that Anri will crack a smile.

_10\. Hush_

It’s hard to talk to Mikado while everything is going on with Blue Square. He squirms every time he talks to him, tries to keep his messages short and sweet so that he doesn’t worry him. He tries to stay himself. Later, when everything blows over (if you can call it that), he types up the whole thing while Mikado’s offline, and then suddenly the other boy signs on and Kida has never hit the backspace button so fast in his life.

_11\. Morals_

The lines blur sometimes – the lines between the Yellow Scarves’ general and Kida Masaomi, the lines between right and wrong, the lines of the characters in his school notes. Sometimes when he’s really sleep deprived and is running primarily on adrenaline and yesterday’s coffee, he can’t tell if he’s right or wrong anymore. When he can’t make his feet move anymore, he knows the answer.

_12\. Engage_

He doesn’t usually get involved in the fights – somehow, he always happens to be elsewhere when issues pop up. But the couple times he does, he realizes he doesn’t know shit. He’s a scrawny junior high kid with nothing but his fists, and the man in front of him is at least 20 and has a knife. After that he starts looking for someone to teach him to fight.

_13\. Voice_

_It feels weird,_ Mikado writes, a couple weeks after he gets the computer and they start talking again. _Talking to you, and not being able to hear your voice._ Kida puts his hands to the keys but doesn’t know what to say. Mikado saves him, though, writing: _That’s okay, though. I can still hear it in my head. You still sound the same :)_

_14\. Awkward_

“There’s no point hiding it anymore,” he sighs dramatically as he swings an arm around Mikado’s shoulders. He pulls him around a corner, snags a magazine off the stand and shoves it into Mikado’s face. “You’ll never win her over without real knowledge, my friend. This is what you need.”

“Masaomi,” Mikado says, and his face is redder than Kida’s ever seen it. “This is—”

“Kida-kun? Ryuugamine-kun?” comes Anri’s voice from behind them. “What are you looking at?”

_15\. Lower_

His head is pounding when he wakes the first time – he feels dizzy and confused and can’t figure out why he’s so cold. He reaches for his phone, but it’s not there, and something tugs at his arm and when he looks down, in the dark, he realizes it’s an IV. He still doesn’t understand, but he’s being pulled back under, and as his eyelids slip shut and he catches a glimpse of Mikado and Anri sleeping in the plastic chairs by his bed, he realizes that his chest hurts too.

_16\. Plead_

The first time he calls, he doesn’t really think he’ll pick up. The fourth time he knows. The eighth time he doesn’t even know why he’s still trying. The twelfth time he’s shaking and whispering to himself, desperate. Please, _please_ , he thinks, just answer, just pick up, you have to. He hates himself for crying, because tears will never move Orihara Izaya – after all, Kida can’t even move his own feet.

_17\. Caring_

He realizes he likes Mikado when they’re playing video games on a day off during elementary school, but he doesn’t say anything. He realizes he likes Saki on a sunny afternoon while they stroll with the Yellow Scarves, but he doesn’t say anything. He realizes he _still_ likes Mikado (and maybe likes Anri) on the night he drags them to the festival, but he doesn’t say anything. He realizes that choosing is hard and he wishes he didn’t have to because it doesn’t make any sense on the day he leaves – but he still doesn’t say anything.

_18\. Believe_

Kida has seen… a lot of things now. Headless foreign fairies on motorcycles and girls who can pull swords from thin air and information brokers who can pretty much read your mind and a guy who can chuck a vending machine down the street with all the effort it takes to flip open a phone. Seeing is believing – and he’s seen all that. He’s yet to see himself protect any of the things that matter to him.

_19\. Found_

Kida spots Mikado the moment he steps off the train that day – only to lose him a moment later in the crowd. He hurries forward, worried at first, then a bit panicky when he doesn’t see him. He might have imagined it, maybe Mikado’s not here at all, maybe he’s not even coming—

And then he steps through a crowd and Kida breathes, “Mikado,” and has to force it to turn into something stronger. His feet feel like they’re sitting a little bit more firmly on the ground.

_20\. Shield_

He walks into the warehouse and pictures a wall – built of steel and ten feet tall. He is the wall, and he has unbendable metal in his bones and he is taller than every man here even if a third of them are a good ten years over his age and he will protect what’s important to him, even if it means taking a wrench to the face, even if it means dying, because that is all that still matters.

_21\. Open_

“I’m not saying anything!” Mikado says desperately, waving his hands in Kida’s face. “But _if_ I was! Then I would just like to point out that just because it would be easy for you doesn’t mean it’s easy for everyone else!”

“What are you talking about?” Kida asks with a shake of his head. “Just _talk_ to her, why’s that so hard?”

“Not everyone can be as honest as you, Masaomi,” Mikado sighs, and Kida is… genuinely surprised.

_22\. Tactile_

None of them are touchy people in… any sense of the word, really. Anri looks like she’ll break if you look at her wrong, and Mikado makes a funny face if you step too close into his personal space. Still, sometimes, Kida wishes he could just drag them into a hug – not for any sappy reason, just because he thinks they deserve it.

_23\. Journey_

Everything starts and ends the same – it doesn’t matter how far you go, how much you change, what happens in the in between, because nothing will really change. At the end he still can’t protect what he loves, and he still doesn’t know who he is. But Saki smiles at him, Tanaka Tarou and Saika log on, and he thinks maybe he can deal with that. Sometimes things don’t have to change.

_24\. Scowl_

_Go die_ , he types cheerfully, but his face is fixed in a grimace. Saki can’t see what he’s typing, but she laughs anyway. He doesn’t like the way that the name pops up on his screen, and he _hates_ the words that follow it. The other names in the chat make it a little better.

_25\. Hero_

At the end of the day, he didn’t save anyone. He walked into the warehouse and took a wrench to the forehead and passed out in Mikado’s arms and those are just the facts. Mikado and Anri saved themselves. They didn’t need Kida to save them.

And maybe, he thinks, he doesn’t need them to save him, either. Maybe he can be his own hero.


End file.
